Notifications associate events (both system and custom) to e-mail recipients. When an event is fired and picked up, e-mails will be sent out. Notification recipients are defined by notification types. For example, you can set it to only send e-mails to a specific user or all members from a given user group. You can add multiple notifications to a given event.
JIRA ships with a comprehensive list of notification types that will cover many of your needs. The following table lists all the notification types available and how they work:
|
Notification type |
Description |
|---|---|
|
The reporter of the issue (usually the person who originally created the issue). | |
|
The user who fired the event. | |
|
Lead of the project that the issue belongs to. | |
|
Lead of the component the issue belongs to. | |
|
Any user that exists in JIRA. | |
|
All users that belong to the specified group. | |
|
All users that belong to the specified project role. | |
|
Any e-mail address. | |
|
All users that are watching this issue. | |
|
The users specified in the user type custom field. For example, if you have a User Picker custom field called Recipient, the user selected in the custom field will receive notifications if he/she has access to the issue. | |
|
All users that belong to the group in the group type custom field. For example, if you have a Group Picker custom field called Approvers, all users from the group (with access to the issue) selected in the custom field will receive notifications. |
As you can see, the list includes a wide range of options from issue reporters to values contained in custom fields. Basically, anything that can be represented as a user in JIRA can have notifications set up.
If a user belongs to more than one notification for a single event, JIRA will make sure that only one e-mail will be sent so the user does not receive duplicates. In order for a user to receive notifications, the user must have permission to view the issue. The only exception to this is when using the Single Email Address option (we will discuss security in Chapter 8, Securing JIRA). If the user does not have the permission to view the issue, JIRA will not send a notification e-mail.
We will look at how you can add notifications to events, so that users can start receiving e-mails, but before that, you need to first take a look at the notification scheme.